Alibaba Cloud AI programmer gets mixed reactions

Alibaba Cloud recently unveiled its first “AI programmer,” during the company’s Cloud AI summit in Shanghai on June 21, 2024. 

South China Morning Post says the AI programmer helps developers come up with applications quicker.

Also, it is a software architect, development engineer and test engineer rolled into one. 

READ: How to write code with ChatGPT

Many people praised this significant artificial intelligence milestone, but some human programmers expressed concerns it may take over many job opportunities.

What are the AI programmer’s features?

The AI programmer is a “multi-intelligence agent” that can build applications within minutes. It plays the roles mentioned above to achieve end-to-end product functionality. 

“The development paradigm for software applications is changing,” said Xu Dong, general manager of Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Qianwen LLM service.

Tongyi Qianwen is the AI model behind the AI programmer. The name roughly translates to “truth from a thousand questions.” Learn more about it in this other Inquirer Tech article. 

“In the future, users only need to identify problems and express requirements, and completing an application development in minutes will become the norm,” Xu claimed.

The AI programmer could perform decomposition, code writing, testing and debugging through multiple conversations with a user. 

However, some human programmers expressed their apprehensions over this new tool.

SCMP shared some of their opinions, such as those from developer Liang Yan.

He admits the AI tool may save development time, but it may prevent human programmers from understanding what they’re doing.

Moreover, it may reduce opportunities for new programmers. 

Developer Yang Yi said he used similar AI programmers and found they still need further development. 

“I asked AI to write specific code, but it generated code that was not so reliable, sometimes with grammatical or factual errors,” Yang said. “It reduces the workload, but not completely.”

You may find AI tools outside China that have similar programming and coding capabilities.

Soon, AI programmers will become the norm, and IT professionals must prepare for this setup.